Under Shadows
by May000
Summary: It is, she thinks, quite unusual to have a common point of interest with your kidnapper.


A/N: Written for a prompt a few months ago.

Under Shadows

Sayu hadn't noticed him to start with, among the men who were eight times his size. After screaming her lungs out, she'd heard him ward them all off and tell them that they shouldn't touch her under any circumstances. He'd stared at her with sharp, feline eyes, then, as if expecting a response.

Then he'd left when she hadn't said anything. The room was small and the only light came from a single lightbulb. Her hands had been handcuffed and she had been blindfolded as they'd forced her to travel over. She'd been on a plane for several hours and the feeling of being so far away from Japan made her head swim. Time became more fluid, and although Sayu settled a little, she couldn't have been called at all used to her situation. She was there for hours or there for days and she couldn't work it out. Not really, although it couldn't have been that long since her father would come to get her before she was there for too much time.

No-one came to her, then, though. She stared and thought about her mother crying and her father frantic and her brother calmly trying to console them both. And with the thought of beautiful, brilliant Light, she began to cry. She kept it soft, because who knew what would happen if _he_ heard her crying. She wondered if he'd kept her for himself, and whether he'd hand her over to the others when he was done.

Footsteps approached and she forced herself together because it was a good idea to keep a front of bravery. Or perhaps it wasn't and they would take pleasure in breaking what little spirit she had left. Sayu had never been as good at determining a situation as Light was. But she was always not quite as good as Light, so it hadn't really made a difference up until that point. If she were Light, maybe she would have thought her way out of the situation, already.

The door opened and it was the young man who seemed to command everyone else. He was slender and not particularly tall, but he seemed to loom aggressively, anyway. Sayu cowered. This was the point where he took whatever he wanted. He crossed the room and she eyed him, noticing that he was holding something.

"I need to keep my hostages healthy," he said. "And those thugs in the other room have the brains of cockroaches."

Sayu said nothing and saw that he was carrying a sandwich and a bottle of water. Her stomach coiled, although she knew that she must have been hungry, really, she wouldn't have been able to keep anything down.

"It's lunchtime," he said, his Japanese competent but a little stilted and definitely accented. "And you can stop crying because I'm not going to hurt you."

He knelt so they were at eye-level, and he kept eye-contact. His expression was aggressive, but his body-language did not suggest that he was going to hurt her. Instead, he broke open the packet of sandwiches. They seemed to have a salad filling of some kind and Sayu felt like such an innocuous thing was so out of place.

He split off a corner of the sandwich and held it in front of her. Sayu made no move and so he brought his hand closer.

"Alright," he said. "I'd rather you did eat. I like it when my hostages are returned healthy. Makes me seem like a man of my word."

And this annoyed Sayu. He seemed to think that it was about him, that he was the one that was so disadvantaged by all of this. He hadn't been dragged half-way around the world for a serial killer that Sayu wasn't, that she had never met and knew nothing about outside of the news.

"Your daddy would probably prefer it, too," he said. To add insult to injury, there was a tone in his voice that implied that he didn't really care. But the mention of her father triggered something in Sayu. Then she realised that it was better to hold anger than fear. Anger seemed to strengthen her whereas tears were exhausting.

"Don't you mention my daddy," she said. Her voice shook, but she was more angry than scared.

He paused, still holding the piece of sandwich. "Okay. Your daddy is most likely a good, upstanding man," he said. "I can't really make the judgement that he's not although he's not caught Kira, yet. But that could be down to your brother."

Sayu felt her stomach drop and she wasn't sure why. "What about my brother?" she said. "If you're not going to mention my dad, then you're not mentioning my brother, either."

Her voice was a high-pitched shout, and she was breathing heavily. Still, she liked to think that she had knocked him back just a little. A fragment of lettuce fell from the sandwich he was holding.

"Ah, I see what he did there," he said, then, smoothly. "You must love him."

Sayu wasn't sure what he meant, although something horrid tapped at the side of her consciousness. The kind of thing that you didn't really want to look at for fear of seeing something worse than anything you've ever seen before.

"Of course I love him," she retorted. "Everybody loves him. He's fantastic. He's the best brother I could have had."

The young man was angled away a little. His eyes were still hard as he turned his head, leaving her looking at his profile. He was very young, she realised; he was no older than her and probably younger. She wondered what he must have done to have such authority over the thugs she'd seen.

"The best brother…" he muttered. "The best son…the best…the best."

His voice dissolved into silence at the end, there, although it had an edge; almost a mocking tone. "Tell me, Sayu Yagami," he spoke up, after a while. "Have you thought about what it's like out of his shadow?"

His frankness seemed to hit Sayu in her chest. "I'm not…" she muttered. "Nobody sees…at least, mum and dad don't…"

It was an unkind question, but perhaps he hadn't meant it to be. He wasn't smiling and his face had softened, although it still had those slanted angles.

"Hopefully," he said, again. "This won't be your only time to shine."

It was grim, but he laughed, anyway. Sayu felt like he was only half talking to her. He looked at the piece of sandwich and put it down.

"Actually, you probably don't want that," he said. "And I'm not going to eat it."

He pushed a hand into the neck of his vest and Sayu shrank away, instinctively, in the event that he had a gun. What he had, though, was a bar of chocolate.

"I don't share this," he said. "It's mine. Only mine. But, _you_ can have some."

In her slightly more relaxed state, Sayu became more aware of her own hunger and her mouth began to water as he snapped a couple of squares off of the bar of chocolate. He fed her by hand and she felt a little embarrassed, but it was sweet and bitter at once on her tongue, and was rich on her taste-buds. She couldn't help but smile contentedly, just a little.

"Delicious, right?" he said. She nodded and he grinned, and it was jackal-like and perhaps if he'd done that to begin with, she would have been frightened. But, now, watching him licking melting chocolate off his own fingers and biting off a couple of squares for himself, he was much less intimidating.

He did the same again for her and this time it was less awkward and she took more time to dwell on the taste and the texture. She wondered if it was European. Probably. He seemed to be. Her situation was still horrible, but she was really so hungry and this was as good as a starvation-fantasy would have given her.

"It's much better than a salad sandwich, am I right?" he said, his mouth full, slipping another square into her mouth. Sayu nodded, her voice muffled, and she swallowed and licked the chocolate from her mouth.

Afterwards, when the bar was gone, he remained in the room, and they used a straw to drink from the bottle of water. Sayu felt her thirst disappear. Relaxing, she became aware that she was still chained to a pipe.

"I can't let you go, just yet. You seem like a nice girl but I can't be sure that you still won't smack me over the head with something heavy," he said. Sayu couldn't see anything heavy in the room that she could plausibly lift.

She relaxed, though. It seemed like he would undo the handcuffs if she tried a little harder. She'd have to be patient. Perhaps she could do something worthy of Light and talk a man into releasing her with her own natural charm and wit, even if they weren't as great as Light's were.

"But," continued the blond. "You should call me Mello."

"Mello," she repeated. He laughed a little at her pronunciation. She smiled back, good-naturedly, then she said. "I've never seen a natural blonde, before."

It was true. Misa dyed her hair, of course, so she hadn't counted.

"It's because you haven't ever left Japan," he replied, "You'll get out from underneath your brother."

Sayu felt a little sober, then. It seemed odd that Mello had brought the conversation back to Light, again. Was he interested in finding out about Light or was he just trying to get at her? Perhaps this was all just a subtle manipulation; as if he thought that Light was her weak spot.

"I'm not trying to be cruel," he said. "I'm just saying."

She nodded. "Aren't your thugs waiting for you?" she said, keeping her voice deliberately airy.

"They're fine. I have a subordinate with half a brain if they aren't," he said. "I'll need to go back soon but I figure that you could offer me a little intelligent conversation."

"I'm not going to tell you anything if you'll use it against my family," she replied. "And you're not going to tell me anything, either."

Mello frowned, his eyes hardening again, then he looked thoughtful. His expressive eyes seemed to flick through emotions. "Okay, I'll tell you something," he said. "I know what it's like to be under somebody's shadow. Everything that you do, they do better. Have already done better, or perhaps they wait until you've done it so that they can rip the triumph from your hands."

His eyes were cold, again, and the planes of his face were hard. "I'm making it so that's not the case anymore," he said. "That's why you're here."

Sayu felt cowed, again, but she spoke, even so. "Light doesn't do that to me," she said, quietly.

Mello looked her in the eye for a moment. "Because you don't give him cause to."

Sayu didn't reply, and she wondered what it would have been like if she'd actively fought. What if Light hadn't been so lovely, after all?

"I'm sorry, that was a little too cruel," he said, although Sayu reasoned that in the scheme of things, it might not have been so much. He came towards her and Sayu did not flinch. He opened his hand and showed her a square of half melted chocolate. Sayu grimaced, but she craved it, all the same. "Let's share this."


End file.
